Imagination, ecologized and enacted: driven by the historicity of affordance competition.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2024 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1369820 via PubMed
Summary
Imagination can be explained as arising from competition between perceived opportunities for action, known as affordances. This paper integrates ecological psychology and enactivism to argue that synaptic plasticity—the strengthening of neural connections from past interactions—provides the historical basis for this competition. When affordances conflict, imagination resolves the stand-off. The author proposes that sensorimotor traces of prior experiences can be repurposed as representations, grounding representational accounts within an ecological-enactive framework.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Imagination is driven by affordance competition, and synaptic plasticity records the historicity of this competition, allowing sensorimotor traces to serve as representations. |
Abstract
Together, ecological psychology and enactivism can explain imagination as being driven by affordance competition. This paper presents synaptic plasticity as a hotspot for the respective historicity. First, (i) affordances are introduced as directly perceptible on the ecological view, and as co-created by an individual on the enactive view. After pointing out their compatibility, (ii) empirical underpinnings of the historicity of affordance competition are summarized and followed by a non-representational interpretation thereof. They are used to explain: (iii) What affords imagining? After discussing both van Dijk and Rietveld's in 2020 non-representational answer and McClelland's in 2020 representational one, I propose a more general explanation: a stand-off between competing affordances can be resolved by imagination, driven by affordance competition. Arguably, (iv) the sensorimotor traces of previous interactions (e.g., strengthened synapses) can be repurposed as representations - grounding even representational explanations in an ecologized enactive framework.